If you are good at selling and have been employed as a salesperson for a while now, you are most probably looking for a more senior post. The next step to take is to become a sales consultant.
As a sales consultant, you will be responsible for devising strategies to promote and sell your employer’s products or services. You will liaise with clients to ensure the requirements are met with trust and integrity.
Read on if you want to know more. We’ll share important information regarding what you will have to do as a sales consultant. You will discover what skills and educational qualifications you need, what your salary could be, and how and where to apply online.
- What Are The Duties Of A Sales Consultant?
- Why Is It Necessary To Liaise With Clients?
- What Are The Skills Needed?
- What Qualifications Are Needed?
- What Is The Salary To Expect?
- Where Can I Look For Vacancies?
What Are The Duties Of A Sales Consultant?
You can summarize your duties as a sales consultant in one sentence: “You must determine the needs of customers and offer solutions using your company’s products and services.” But to do that is not so simple. It requires hard work.
You have to know your company’s products very well. To be a successful sales consultant, you have to be up-to-date with the most recent market trends and products relevant to your company’s products and services. You must, on an ongoing basis, conduct online research to analyze your competitors’ products.
Your company’s statistical information on what products have been sold and when, how, and how they’ve been sold must be looked at regularly. This statistical research is essential to determine how your sales-strategy has to be adjusted for your products to stay relevant.
You must have regular meetings with senior management regarding your research to convey the findings and possible solutions.
What Are Meet And Exceed Sales Quotas?
Generally, sales consultants lead a small team of salespersons. As the sales consultant, you will collaborate with your senior management and determine sales quotas for yourself and your team. It is part of your duties to motivate and teach your team, enabling them to reach the set quotas.
For products your team has problems with selling, you devise new sales techniques and strategies. You often will use the new techniques yourself first to demonstrate to your team how and when to use them.
Why Is It Necessary To Liaise With Clients?
To establish long-lasting relationships between your company and clients, you personally must have good relations with them. Trust and respect between you and the clients will lead to trust in your company and its products and services.
Your liaison with your clients should be in the spirit of mutual interest in each other and not just a call to sell something again. The client must feel free to contact you when he is not satisfied with a product or service. And then it is expected from you as the sales consultant to offer solutions.
You must listen and monitor your clients’ preferences and need for possible new products or services with your liaison. You will also sometimes demonstrate new products your client might be interested in or explain how existing tools or services can be utilized by your client.
What More Does The Role Include?
As the sales consultant, it is expected from you to work with your company’s creative team to develop new online campaigns, brochures, and other marketing material.
Your input has mostly its origin in your liaison with existing and potential clients.
Communication is key to your success as a sales consultant. You have to communicate with existing and potential clients, the target market in general, your sales team, your company’s creative team, and your senior management.
What Are The Skills Needed?
Your communication with clients will often be one-way communication – from the client to you. You must have the ability to listen and to convey what you’ve learned to the relevant people. As the sales consultant, you will communicate with clients on all levels.
It might be the CEO you have to contact, but it can also be the operator of the tool bought from your company. You must be able to handle all these conversations. And remember, you are still in sales.
You have to be able to explain product features and benefits in comparison to competing brands. A sales consultant should be able to prepare and monitor sales processes. Basic computer skills are needed.
The skill to do CRM-monitoring is essential. No sales plan can be executed without goals. As a sales consultant, you must know how to formulate goals, set them, and entice your team to reach the goals.
How To Initiate And Run Loyalty Programs?
Loyalty from clients is often strengthened by specific loyalty programs offered by a company. It is the sales consultant’s responsibility to determine what the clients would appreciate.
You have to evaluate it and compare it with what competitors offer, and develop programs unique to your company. To keep clients’ loyalty consistently, you’ll have to provide quality follow-up customer service and maintenance to all accounts.
Loyalty programs build strong client relations. You must contain effective communications throughout all phases of whatever your loyalty program offers. Happy and loyal clients form a large percentage of your recurrent clientele.
What Qualifications Are Needed?
Generally, those seeking to work as sales consultants would only need a high school diploma or the equivalent. But most employers prefer candidates with a relevant college or university degree. Training in Excel, databases, and programs like PowerPoint will enhance your chances to get the job.
Studies have shown that the most common degree sales consultants have a bachelor’s degree. Other favorite degrees include High school Diploma degrees, Associate degrees, and Masters’s degrees. The most favorite majors are business studies, marketing, communication, and psychology.
Do You Need Any Experience?
Sales experience is essential. Interestingly, some employers require that the experience should have been in the same or related industry. Others specifically are looking for people with new and innovative ideas from other industries.
Generally, employers will clearly state it in their advertisement whether they are looking for someone from the same industry or not. Don’t waste your time applying for jobs that you don’t have the right experience for.
Whatever the case, the employer would want proof that you’ve been an excellent salesperson, shown leadership, and handled clients professionally.
What Is the Salary To Expect?
On average, a sales consultant receives a salary of $75,000 in the USA. This can differ greatly depending on the industry, company, location, experience, and benefits.
According to the latest information available, sales consultants in San Francisco earn on average $88,000 with more than $150,000 for top consultants. In Seattle, the average is $59,000, and in New York City, it is $57,000.
The salary for a sales consultant also varies depending on the years of experience that a person has. Factors such as knowledge, complexity, contacts, and environment also play a role.
How To Apply Online
There are a variety of online platforms where you can apply online for jobs. If you’ve decided you want to apply for sales consultant jobs, use these platforms to do it. You don’t have to use only one platform; you can utilize more than one at once.
Generally, there are two ways to apply online, and often you can utilize both methods on the same platform. You can prepare your CV and post it on the platform. Employers looking for sales consultants look on the platform for people interested.
The employer will then contact you, either via the platform or directly, if he needs more information or wants to offer you the job. If you are only interested in a job in a specific geographical area, you must mention it in your post. You can even give the minimum salary you’re interested in.
Where Can I Look For Vacancies?
The other way to apply is to search the platforms for jobs posted by employers looking for sales consultants. You then contact them, normally via the platform, with your CV and other information.
The same principle applies here as when you put yourself into the market – don’t apply to fill a vacancy if you are not seriously interested in the specific company or geographical area. You’ll waste your time and irritate a potential employer.
Search online for employment websites and look at their programs. Many offer a free-of-charge service, while others require that you register and pay a small registration fee. Three platforms you can start with are the employment websites of Indeed, SimplyHired, and Glassdoor.
Why Should You Have A Relevant CV?
In your CV, you have to find the fine balance between giving enough information and do it so concisely and organized that the potential employer can get a glance without reading everything.
Studies show that employers only spend about 5-7 seconds looking at a single resume when they start scanning for possible recruits. If they find something interesting during those few seconds, they will later go back and read more.
What have to be in the CV is your personal detail, relevant experience, skills, and qualifications, and why you are the best person to fill the vacancy.
Conclusion
If you are a salesperson, to apply to be appointed as a sales consultant at a company is the logic following step. If you think you have the experience, skills, and motivation to do the job, start applying online now!